AOL the negatives :

like allot of providers at that time AOL were very guilty of trying to brand the internet as being a product they created and locking their customers into their own crap content, and providing daft software to clog your computer and brand it horribly AOL lifestylee. And leaving them was a nightmare, as I found trying to get my clients off them.The video below is good evidence of that. Then number of Cd’s they generated and distributed that are in landfills and will not degrade for another 100 years or more.

AOL the positives :

They got allot of plebian technophobes onto the internet, who otherwise might have found it to difficult to get setup, you could access your AOL dialup account from most countrys in the world, usefull for travellers, until dialup was no longer an option internet wise.

Overall Redundant well before many people stopped using it, held some peoples internet evolution back for some time, at the deliberate financial benefit of AOL.